During outdoor storage of large quantities of wood fuels, hydrocarbons are emitted into air in gas phase and leached out into the ground by precipitation. To investigate to what extent these emissions have environmental or health effects, sampling has been done on wood chip piles in an existing terminal storage situated in the south of Sweden, north east of Vaxjo. Sampling was done by solid phase microextraction (SPME) and analyzed on a gas chromatograph equipped with a mass spectrometer. The storage period, during which sampling was performed, stretches from June through January, a total of 200 days. Sampling was performed at 7 occasions. The results show that emissions into air increases when the temperature directly above the pile increases. The temperature above the pile decrease with the ambient temperature, up until September for the forest residue and October for the bark and root reducing wood chips, when the temperature above the pile suddenly increases. This could be due to the ambient temperature, the storage time or microbial activity. The PAH content in the leachate, 27.27 mug/l, does not seem to be in the range where it might give large effects on the environment. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.